Paul Rodgers and Bad Company went to number one today in 1974. (Gabe Palacio/Getty Images)

Jimmy Page was an in-house record producer for Immediate Records today in 1965 when he received a demo tape from Martin Raynor and the Secrets. He was excited enough about it to have an acetate made to play for the label head honchos, who could not have been less interested.

The Beatles started a nine-week run at #1 on the U.S. charts today in 1968 with a song Paul McCartney thought up while he was driving to visit John Lennon’s recently divorced wife Cynthia and their son Julian. Hey Jude was originally titled Hey Jules. Julian had no idea the song was about him for almost 20 years. In 1996 he paid £25,000 to buy Paul’s hand-written recording notes at auction. He later said that growing up he’d been closer to Paul than to his father.

An English “super-group” made up of members of Free, Mott The Hoople, and King Crimson named for a 1972 “Acid Western” starring a very young Jeff Bridges…Bad Company…went to number 1 on the U.S. album charts today in 1974. Led Zeppelin’s Peter Grant was also their manager, and the self-titled debut was released on Zeppelin’s Swan Song label.

A&M Records sued George Harrison today in 1976 for 6 million dollars, two months after the deadline for his new record on his own Dark Horse label which A&M had agreed to distribute. George had been suffering from hepatitis, and told them the record would be ready when it was ready. The lawsuit made him decide to release Thirty Three and 1/3 on Dark Horse, distributed through Warner Brothers, who were all too happy to have him.

Local Liverpool news media were calling for the immediate arrest today in 2010 of souvenir hunting Ringo Starr fans who had been tearing apart the front masonry bits of the row house at 9 Madryn Street where he’d lived as a baby. The entire run down “Welsh Streets” neighborhood was slated for demolition in 2005, but Liverpudlians are proud of their Beatle heritage, and came together to finally have it protected in 2012. Yet it remains more or less rotting, no one has come forward with funds for renovation or operation as an attraction, and a BBC piece noted “The staircase has gone and there are pigeon feathers and faeces carpeting the floor”. The building buying and blue plaque placing National Trust declined to get involved, noting that Ringo didn’t live there long, and “History tells us that the Beatles lived in more than a dozen houses during their collective childhoods and it would not be realistic for the Trust to try and acquire all of these buildings”.

Rock and Roll Birthdays

CBS Television host Ed Sullivan, the man who introduced America to Elvis Presley and The Beatles, would be 116 today. He died in 1974.